Ignorance writ large

It is no secret that I think that the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Ownership Violence is only exceeded in its lies, distortions, and mendacity by the Violence Policy Center. Mayors Against Illegal Guns is still small, but they are going to be big time as well. The proprietress over at CommonGunsense is Joan Peterson, a board member at Brady. I’ve been commenting heavily at her site, but she moderates her comments in order to prevent difficult arguments from being heard. I see that a lot in the Anti-gun blogs. There’s even a term for what the antis do, it’s called Reasoned Discourse ™. Rather than try to argue through a blender, I’d rather scream here.

With gun laws that would stop some of the trafficking, we can save lives if we have the will and courage to do so.

Read the whole thing and savor the fail. Japete, as Ms Peterson styles herself on her blog, seems to think that there is some magic law or series of laws that would prevent an idiot from buying a gun on the street for cash and using it to murder someone. Never mind that murder is illegal already. Here’s what I think based on the info given at the newspaper reporting, the Star-Tribune

1. Dollars to donuts the shooter is a gang member/drug dealer/criminal lowlife.

2. There’s a good possibility that the victim in this case is as well

As I stated in the few comments that have been posted, no normal human being will murder another. You have to be pretty messed up in the first place to kill without a reasonable justification. Shooting over a cell phone, or more likely the “disrespect” of the victims towards him, is so far beyond the pale that you have to wonder what this guy was already up to so that he felt that murder was ok. Criminal activity, by definition, selects for people who have a fluid attitude toward the law. When you get involved in the drug trade (and when we talk about gangs, we’re talking about drugs) means that you have to settle business disputes with violence. If AT&T has a problem with Sprint, they don’t send commandos; they send lawyers because no matter how powerful you think you are, the government is bigger. When you can’t send the government to use force on your behalf, you have to use that force yourself. In an environment of violence as solutions, the more violent you are, the higher you will rise. It’s kind of like a communist government that way. Violent sociopaths rise, and are given work, non-violent types die.

Japete would like to convince us all that “Most gun homicides are domestic and/or among people who know each other.” That isn’t true the way she means it. Drug dealers kill each other, and they also know each other. It wouldn’t make much sense to kill someone you don’t know. Even violent sociopaths need to have reasons for killing. Here’s an FBI table that shows the relationships of murders to victims in 2004. You see that there is no know relationship between killers and victims in 6,234 cases out of 14,121. Adding up, there are 1,694 out of a total of 14,121 that qualify as “family members.” That’s 11% of all murders.

Here’s what I don’t get. Why is she so invested in the concept of “Anyone can snap and become a murderer in an instant!!!!111eleventy” If I was a woman and I met a guy who told me “all men cheat,” I’d know something about him immediately. I’d know that he will cheat. He’s already told me. Now if a person says,